Jewelry
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Jewelry was a diverse art during the middle ages of making items that ornamented their wearer. Items could be purely decorative, or practical items to which decoration was added to create a pleasant effect, and impression of wealth.
Jewelry included items modernly thought of as jewelry:
- rings, including seal rings
- brooches including annulars, pennanulars, disk brooches
- necklaces
- pendants including decorative seals, reliquaries, and much more
- decorative pins, and also veil pins
- bracelets
- earrings
and also other items:
- horse harness pendants
- fancy jewelled belts
- jewelled trim on clothing
- fillets (head bands), torcs, circlets, crowns, coronets
- pilgrims badges
Jewelry could be made from a variety of materials:
- metal wire (gold, silver, copper, lead, alloys....)
- cast metal such as pewter
- beads from gemstones, glass, ivory, shell and coral, rock (e.g. fossils), wood or [metal]]
- enamelling
- carved wood or ivory (sometimes covered in other objects, e.g. painted, gilded or inset with gems)
- coins or other keepsakes, e.g. a disk brooch or earring from a coin (although in some cases deliberate copies were manufactured).
